by Andrew Walden
Who is Jared Lee Loughner, the alleged shooter of US Rep Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and assassin of Bush-appointed Federal Judge John Roll and five others including nine-year old Christina-Taylor Green?
The media is doing everything it can to tie Loughner to the TEA Party, or any other conservative movement. Sarah Palin’s name comes up in article after article. A rambling memo leaked from the Obama Homeland Security Department suggests, without providing any evidence, that Loughner was tied to some kind of racist eugenics group. Coverage of the assassination is full of rhetoric from the November election and Arizona’s debates over illegal immigration.
But when one sets aside the spin, a very different picture emerges:
AP gets a little of the truth
High school classmate Grant Wiens, 22, said Loughner seemed to be “floating through life” and “doing his own thing.”
“Sometimes religion was brought up or drugs. He smoked pot, I don’t know how regularly. And he wasn’t too keen on religion from what I could tell,” Wiens said.
From Loughner’s YouTube video titled “Introduction: Jared Loughner”
“I didn’t write a belief on my Army application, and the recruiter wrote on the application: none.”
“No! I won’t trust in God!”
Contrary to reports that Loughner was a veteran, the Army states that his application was rejected in 2008.
FLAG BURNING VIDEO from Loughner’s You Tube page. Is that Loughner in the video lighting the flag? Is he describing America as "a terrorist country?"
From Loughner’s You Tube page, favorite books included the Communist Manifesto and also the National Socialist manifesto known as Mein Kampf:
I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.
Phoenix New Times: Jared Loughner, Alleged Shooter in Gabrielle Giffords Attack, Described by Classmate as "Left-Wing Pothead"
"As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. & oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy."
"He was a pot head & into rock like Hendrix,The Doors, Anti-Flag. I haven't seen him in person since '07 in a sign language class"
"He was a political radical & met Giffords once before in '07, asked her a question & he told me she was "stupid & unintelligent"
WaPo: A classmate describes Loughner’s behavior in class last June
From June 1, the first day of class:
"One day down and nineteen to go. We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I'm not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon."
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